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Mental health disorders are among the leading worldwide causes of disease and long-term disability. This issue has a long and painful history of gradual de-stigmatization of patients, coinciding with humanization of therapeutic approaches. What are the current trends in Russia regarding this issue and in what ways is it similar to and different from Western countries? IQ.HSE provides an overview of this problem based on research carried out by Svetlana Kolpakova.

On September 5, Laurie Manchester, Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, presented her paper on voluntary repatriation of Russians from China to the Soviet Union between 1935 and 1960. The presentation was part of the research seminar, ‘Boundaries of History’, held regularly by the Department of History at HSE University in St. Petersburg. HSE News Service spoke with Laurie Manchester about her research interests, collaborating with HSE faculty members, and the latest workshop.

Dr. Sabyasachi Tripathi, from Kolkata, India, is a new research fellow at HSE University. He will be working at the Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies of the Institute for Statistical Studies and Economics of Knowledge.

Book

The diversity represented in this book, not only in respect to author nationality, but also in theoretical and empirical approaches, reflects one of the most salient features of the European Communication Research and Education Association: Organisational and Strategic Communication Section’s identity. The spectrum of themes analysed in this collection – crisis communication, government communication, organisational communication and social media, corporate social responsibility, health media relations – demonstrates the range and vitality of organisational and strategic communication research in Europe.

The dramatic societal changes such as globalisation and information revolution transformed terrorism into a huge security challenge at the turn of the millennium. Modern terrorist groups have access to unprecedented mechanisms of data monitoring, finance collection and recruiting all over the world. Though 9/11 is usually perceived as the dividing line, Russia started experiencing a large-scale terrorism-provoked societal crisis several years before the notorious date.
Today’s widespread global terrorism is a product of the informational age because terror is a communication act, a means to transmit messages to the authorities through the mass media and the key audiences. That is why media relations are one of the most important actions in anti-terrorist policy.
This paper presents multidisciplinary analysis of terrorism as communication and a social crisis. Most crisis researchers classify terrorism as a crisis of malevolence and a conflict-type crisis. Crisis management expert Paul Shrivastava (2005) qualifies terrorism crisis as a particular crisis type that needs special research and response strategies. This study analyses crisis communication and media relations of the Information Policy Department of the President of Russia for years 2000-2004 during the counterterrorist operation in Chechen Republic. The findings are based on internal governmental documents regulating terrorism-related communication policy.
By the year 2000 when the Information Policy Department was created, Chechnya was under the control of terrorist and criminal groups with its own successful propaganda though the Republic was still legally a part of Russia. The Chechen crisis was a large-scale creeping crisis which consisted of different micro-crises such as: terror acts, armed raids, incriminations, rumors and disinformation, social protests. By practicing the principles of speaking with one voice, openness and efficiency the Information Policy Department coped with the crisis and won the confrontation with the terrorists on the information field.

Сorporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainable business is one of the global trends. Abundance of corporate social responsibility ratings allows us to trace the relationship of this parameter with the financial and organizational results of the company. Current studies in this area are based on qualitative methods and small sample of firms that did not allow to give a clear answer about the presence or absence of the correlation. Correlation analysis of a large number of companies allowed us to reveal the relationship between the financial and organizational results of the company and its social responsibility level. One of the most significant results is the identification of a positive correlation between CSR level of revenue and long-term organization.

In this Chapter the author analyzes the process of formation of the regulatory foundations of occupational safety and health on the international level and in Russia, including the historical context, contemporary conceptual approaches to its regulation, its relation to the relevant international standards, peculiarities of the governmental policy in the field, corporate regulatory initiatives and respective pressing problems.

This is the eighth (8th) book of the Athens Institute of Education and Research (ATINER) Media series which have been put together as a compendium of books exploring various areas of media and communication.

We address the external effects on public sector efficiency measures acquired using Data Envelopment Analysis. We use the health care system in Russian regions in 2011 to evaluate modern approaches to accounting for external effects. We propose a promising method of correcting DEA efficiency measures. Despite the multiple advantages DEA offers, the usage of this approach carries with it a number of methodological difficulties. Accounting for multiple factors of efficiency calls for more complex methods, among which the most promising are DMU clustering and calculating local production possibility frontiers. Using regression models for estimate correction requires further study due to possible systematic errors during estimation. A mixture of data correction and DMU clustering together with multi-stage DEA seems most promising at the moment. Analyzing several stages of transforming society’s resources into social welfare will allow for picking out the weak points in a state agency’s work.

The paper examines the institute of minimum wage in developed and transition economies and in a number of the developing countries. First of all the institutional mechanism of minimum wage fixing is considered. One of the sections explores the dynamics of absolute and relative levels of minimum wage. The special attention is paid to the impact of the institute of minimum wage on the labour market. The author considers the mechanism of transmission of the minimum wage increases on the employment and unemployment dynamics. The paper also contains the result of the empirical research. The experience of many countries witnesses that large increases in minimum wage levels lead to the stagnation of the employ-ment, especially of the disadvantaged groups. The negative effect is larger for the companies with higher share of labour costs and more active use of unqualified labour, that is small businesses and agricultural enterprises. One of the main conclusions is that the minimum wage is not an effective tool of the poverty reduction as the majority of the recipients live in households of average and upper average income.